A sandwich adhesion on Streptococcus pneumoniae attaching to human oropharyngeal epithelial cells in vitro

Streptococcus pneumoniae attach to human pharyngeal epithelial cells through the specific interaction of bacterial surface adhesins with glycoconjugate receptors. The present study defines the adhesin as a molecule bridging between an anchoring site in the bacterial cell wall and the epithelial cell receptor. The nature of the adhesin was defined in three ways: First, the attachment of whole bacteria was reduced by trypsin, periodate and heat. Second, heat treatment of whole bacteria was shown to release material, which was able to reconstitute the adherence. The heat extract bound to epithelial cells, as shown by fluorescence labelling, and agglutinated latex beads covalently coupled with receptor oligosaccharide. Active material could be extracted by heat from both high and low adhering strains, but could reconstitute only attaching strains. Third, the bacterial component binding the adhesin was localized to protoplasts and cell wall fractions obtained by mechanical or deoxycholate induced lysis of pneumococci. Isolated pneumococcal surface components, which did not inhibit attachment, included peptidoglycan, C polysaccharide, Forssmann antigen, capsular polysaccharide and a phenol extract produced in analogy to streptococcal lipoteichoic acid. The procedure used to extract the adhesin was previously used to prepare the competence factor. The competence deficient mutant RA7- attached poorly compared to the competent R6 parent. The possible relatedness of attachment to competence is discussed.